Yes, that’s correct. Several hours ago, GMail , a.k.a. Google Mail, the gold standard for free, Web-based email, crashed, and no one could use it. When 100 million geeks lose their mojo, the tech world comes to grinding halt.

You don’t have mailThe failure set off a worldwide panic. If you think this doesn’t affect you because you’re not a geek or because you don’t use GMail, think again.

You might not use it, but digital information is the undercurrent of nearly every business and every job in the world these days. And the people who paddle that current, your IT guys and the tech industry people they deal with hourly, do all of their serious communication via GMail.

There are other ways, of course, to send emails. But those emails would go to disabled GMail accounts, since that’s where everyone receives their mail. More than that, Gmail has become the tech world’s “junk drawer,” like the drawer in most kitchens where important stuff is stored. Without access to stored emails, files, etc, nothing can get done.

And so the crash happened, and pocket protectors around the world began overheating.

In the world of Web 2.0, where people connect instantly, the best way to find out what’s going on anywhere on the planet at that exact moment is to search Twitter to see what people are saying to each other in their rapid fire, 140-character blasts.

Nervous twitches on TwitterHere’s a sample of what was floating out there as the sun came up in South Texas:

• d4nt: How long before a #gfailmeans the president has to go on TV to calm everyone down? I reckon 10 years

• SPni: Gmail is back! I can live again! #gfailThis would have impacted fewer people if more of them had employed GMail’s new offline storage feature, which automatically backs up all GMail sent, received and stored — on your computer — in case of incidents like this. They couldn’t have received mail, but at least they would have had access to a years’ worth of mail and attachments on their computer’s hard drive.